Stabilizers

Stabilizers

Stabilizers are a key element of any Mechanical Keyboard. How well they are installed and tuned can make or break a build.

Keycaps are mounted onto the stem of the switch. If a keycap is too long, it starts to wobble and becomes unstable. Stabilizers, as the name implies, are designed to solve this wobble issue and make the keypress consistent across a longer keycap like the shift key, space bar, backspace, etc…. It is used for any keycap that is 2u or longer. There are four common types of Stabilizers,

  1. Cherry. This is the most commonly used stabilizer in the Custom Mechanical Keyboard scene, and will be the focus of this section for all intents and purposes.

  2. Costar. This is a less common and simpler take on stabilizers, being mainly just a wire clipped onto stem inserts. The simpler design made it more difficult to change keycaps, as well as having a more persistent rattling noise.

  3. Optical. This is typically only found on keyboard with optical switches.

  4. Alps. This is used for keyboards with the retired Alps switches. It is similar to Costar in a sense that it uses mainly a wire and inserts.